


Warm Again

by Dapplemii



Series: Promare [1]
Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, The promare return
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:48:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22920511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dapplemii/pseuds/Dapplemii
Summary: Lio looked at his hands as he curled and opened his fingers. How much of himself had been the promare? What had he been doing? Lio wrapped his arms around himself. The warmth, the security, the assurance that he had always known what he was doing, it was all gone. He shivered.The promare return!! There's so much to do with the flames so I wanted to explore the world post movie. Trigger I'm basically writing a sequel for you.I'll probably make this a collection later and have it as vignettes. First few chapters will be the build up.
Relationships: Lio Fotia/Galo Thymos
Series: Promare [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1647370
Comments: 5
Kudos: 62





	Warm Again

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this since I saw the movie back in September so enjoy!

“Galo, stay very still”  
In the middle of the apartment Galo stood. His heart rate said he was scared out of his mind, but his expression read curious fascination.  
His entire body was on fire. Not orange fire produced from the combustion of methane. It was a much hotter blue and green flame with hints of purple. Several tufts of flame spread over his raised arms and torso, then up into his spiky blue hair. There were promare all over him.  
“Lio-”  
“Shhh stay still!” Lio cut him off. He inched closer to where Galo was standing and slowly raised his arm up to meet Galo’s.. His fingers brushed the edges of the flames on Galo’s arm.  
“Come to me,” he thought, “Leave Galo alone.”  
For a moment nothing changed, then the first promare began to move onto Lio’s hand, and once it made contact with the familiar body, the rest moved quickly up his arm. Galo watched, bewildered at the sight of them leaving his body and going to Lio. The flames crawled under Lio’s skin and disappeared from sight. 

Galo stayed in the same exact pose until the fire was completely gone then heaved a big sigh. “Well that was odd.”  
“Are you okay Galo?” Lio asked putting his arm back down.  
“Yeah! A little promare never hurt me!” He flexed.  
“Uh... they burnt and scarred your left arm.” Lio retorted.  
“Okay well it didn’t hurt at all this time. It just felt hmm” Galo looked for the words to describe what it felt like to have fire all over his body but not be burnt. “It’s not like how you describe it,” he concluded, “It didn’t feel like they were on the inside.”  
“Clearly, they were all over you.”  
“It didn’t really feel good either! But, it didn’t...hurt. I wasn’t roasting alive.”  
“You don’t resonate with the promare. I guess they were just curious?” Lio wondered with a hand on his chin.  
Galo made a big move of seeming upset. He crossed his arms and closed his eyes with a “Humph. Well you can keep them to yourself. I’m a firefighter. I put out fires. I don’t want them swarming around me.”

“Oh yeah?” Lio reached a hand up to Galo’s face and pushed it to make Galo look at him, “What’s this fire you’ve started then?” Lio smirked. The smaller boy went up on his tiptoes to kiss the larger one.  
Galo grinned his signature big open grin . “I know they’re your flames. Just can’t get enough of me huh?” 

~~~  
One month ago  
~~~

Rebuilding was hard and slow. It took teams from all over Promepolis just to open every burnish pod within the remains of the Parnassus. Lio rarely took breaks but it forced him to go easier on the heavy lifting. Luckily, Galo was just as motivated and got to work on forcing them open. Lio supervised the progress in the engine while simultaneously being bombarded with press. Photographers and journalists wandered around the ship, careful to stay just barely out of the rescue team’s way. If he had had his flames he would have shooed them away with a little fiery warning. Instead he tried to be polite and answer questions. The public didn’t really understand what had happened after all, and everyone needed to know what Kray had done.

Lio was happy to get the truth out, but he wanted to be helping. He wanted to rip open the pods with his bare hands and comfort the people who were trapped inside. He wouldn’t rest until everyone was accounted for.  
“Lio!” He turned his head to Galo who was running up to him waving a frantic arm up in the air.  
“What is it?!” Lio shouted back, concerned but eager. He abandoned his mandatory break to meet Galo halfway.  
“Heris finally got the system working! We don’t have to open them manually anymore.” Galo beamed.  
“Great okay tell her to do it!” Lio was so happy to hear that. Finally, his people would be freed from this terrible prison. “Gueira, Meis!” He called and they were immediately at his side.  
“Boss”  
“Split up and help everyone out of the pods when they open. Get those who need medical attention to the EMTs”  
“Of course boss.” Meis answered.  
“Already on it.” Gueira smiled. The three nodded and they all ran in different directions. Lio followed after Galo who ran to the wall where Aina’s shuttle hovered, ready to receive passengers.  
Heris’ voice came over the speaker, “The pods are about to open please stand back everyone. All non-rescue personnel please vacate the premises.” 

What happened over the next few hours was a lot for Lio to handle. He was called over to a few pods with people half turned to ash. The medics did all they could, but unlike the former-burnish, there was not much they could have done. A wave of relief washed over him whenever he saw someone released relatively unharmed, but it was overshadowed by the grief of each empty pod. All that was left of some was a pile of soot. The final blaze of the promare on earth restored most of the living burnish to their full strength, a parting gift. However, for those who died while the system was overloading or while Lio had been powering the core, there was no way to save them.

“If only the promare had stayed just long enough to heal them…” Lio found himself thinking. And he shivered. 

Lio was completely emotionally and physically drained. Without the adrenaline coursing through his body that had kept him going almost a full twenty-four hours, he realized just how cold and quiet it was. It was out of the rescue team’s hands now, and Ignis demanded that Galo and the rest of the team go home. Lio wanted to argue. He may not have the promare anymore but the burnish were still his people and he had a duty to protect them. Lio had opened his mouth to talk back, but Galo had stopped him, spouting something about how a good firefighter has to rest and keep their strength up in order to help people. So he was reluctantly dragged off to Galo’s apartment on the word that Gueira and Meis would look after the freed burnish. He trusted them, and he trusted Galo too. 

The last bits of his strength were spent on shivering. Galo had opened the door to his apartment, which was a short walk from the Burning Rescue station, and told Lio to make himself at home. 

“Mind if I take the first shower?” Galo asked.

“Go ahead, it’s your apartment.” He replied. Galo went into the bathroom, and Lio sat on the couch pulling a blanket around himself. 

Galo’s building was luckily far enough away from the location of the Parnassus that it was still standing and still had power. It was small but cozy, quiet and...quiet. That’s all Lio could focus on. The only sounds were from the shower in the bathroom and the air conditioner. To anyone else they would be normal white noise. But for Lio they were so loud. 

The whispers in the back of his mind that had been a constant comfort to him for as long as he could remember, were gone. The voice that had always told him, “We want to burn, burn brighter, burn harder” was no longer there.

He recalled a day a long time ago, he had let all of his pent up emotions out at once, his body sparked turquoise and purple, unnatural colors for fire, and he had just let himself burn his emotions away. Anger, frustration, they went out and up with the flames. And a piece of him went along with it. He looked at his fingertips as he suddenly lost feeling in them and was horrified to see them almost fade away. Then a voice came to him, “It’s okay, keep burning, burn brighter” The feeling in his fingers came back, and they turned back to their pale pink color. The burnish were eternal. 

It wasn’t really his powers that Lio missed. He longed for the warmth that had always been there. A warmth that told him that things would always be okay. The world just felt dead now, silent and cold. But Lio could only ponder: Did he really help anyone? Earth was saved, Lio and Galo had saved over seven billion people. But what about his people? The burnish were considered a problem, a threat that needed to be driven out. Leaving and establishing their own city had never been a perfect solution, but within the circumstances, it was a realistic solution. The promare never would have been satisfied that way, but how could he have known that? In the end, sending the promare back to their world ended up being the right thing to do for them and for the earth. Yet, the problem wasn’t solved, it was just removed altogether. Why did the promare even come here in the first place? And what would happen now that they were gone?

Normal humans and the burnish couldn’t be told apart anymore by infrared scanning, but people wouldn’t just forget who was and who wasn’t a burnish. Lio looked at his hands as he curled and opened his fingers. How much of himself had been the promare? What had he been doing? Lio wrapped his arms around himself. The warmth, the security, the assurance that he had always known what he was doing, it was all gone. He shivered.

Suddenly, warm arms enveloped him and a soft voice spoke, “Lio, Are you okay?” 

The shivering stopped, and Lio turned around to see Galo hugging him from behind the couch. His skin was still steamy from the shower, and his embrace was so nice.  
“Galo…” He reached his arms to hold onto Galo’s and leaned back into the embrace. “I’m okay now, thank you.” 

“Okay then, it’s your turn. Go take a nice hot shower.”

“That sounds nice.” Lio shuffled out of Galo’s grip and moved towards the bathroom. 

“Not too hot though! Don’t burn yourself! Oh and there’s a towel hanging up for you!”

“Thanks, I’ll try not to drown” Lio replied without turning around, and then he shut the door.

The hot water felt so soothing. He cranked the knob all the way to hot and the water slowly became scalding. He winced at the water and turned it back just a little bit back to the cold side. Steam filled the room, finally, finally, driving out the feeling of cold. Lio examined his body, there were cuts and bruises despite being held back from too much manual labor. There had never been a scar on his body before. The sting of soap in his cuts was just another reminder that the fire was gone and he would no longer instantly heal. But the sting was also a reminder that this was not the end. It was only the beginning of a new life. Lio ran his shampoo covered fingers through his hair and noticed something. One of his fingernails had snagged on his hair.

He stepped out of the shower to find a change of clothes Galo had somehow been quiet enough to slip in the bathroom. How Galo left them there without Lio noticing was beyond him. He must have been more engrossed in the shower than he thought. He dried off then slipped into the oversized t-shirt and pajama pants Galo provided. Lio hadn’t taken the time away from his people to go shopping yet. He wanted to replace his leather wardrobe but making sure the burnish had places to go and food to eat came first. 

When he left the bathroom, he found Galo on the couch scrolling through the TV channels. After the disaster, it was mostly only news stations reporting on the cleanup process, or state of the government now that its former leader was no longer in power.  
Lio didn’t want to look at the news right now so he looked at his hand again.  
“Hey, do you have a nail file?”  
Galo turned the TV off and tilted his head to look at Lio who stood above him behind the couch.  
“Yeah sure, one sec lemme find it.”  
He got up and Lio took his place on the couch. He came back a minute later with a file and tossed it to Lio before plopping down next to him.  
Lio started filling his ring finger nail back into shape and Galo just sat there next to him, staring into space.  
“I wonder what’s gonna come next?”

Lio paused. He had never stopped asking that question a single day in his life. He slept with one eye open because “next” could mean anything from tomorrow to a few minutes from now. Next was they’re coming run, or a voice coming out of nowhere telling him to burn. And he felt better once he did. But no matter what, whenever Lio started to fall back into his old pattern of feeling like he had to take on the world alone, his friends were there to remind him. 

“Whatever comes next, we’ll face it together. We’re a team.” Those words had always made Lio feel better and they seemed to work on Galo too. He was beaming.  
“Yeah you’re right!”  
Lio let out a small chuckle and put the nail file down. He stretched his arms above his head and let out a yawn.  
“I’m tired, I think I’m gonna head to bed.” He said and stood up taking the blanket with him into the bedroom. Galo was right behind him and had agreed that it was time for bed. 

Lio climbed into the bed and cocooned himself in the sheets and blankets.  
“Lio?” Galo looked down at the clump but only received an annoyed sounding grunt in response.  
“Alright goodnight then Lio” Galo placed a kiss on top of the pile where he assumed Lio’s head was and heard a happier “Hm.”

It was always easy for Galo to fall asleep, and he did quickly, but it was never easy for Lio. Even if he no longer had a reason to worry, the anxiety was trained into his body. He wanted to sleep, but too many thoughts were running through his mind. And he was cold. Though underneath the blankets and by Galo’s side it was so warm, hot even. It was way too hot. Lio emerged from the mess if blankets and pulled one of the layers off, draping it over Galo. One minute he was freezing the next it was so hot he couldn’t stand it. He felt suffocated. He sunk back down and closed his eyes. He turned on his side to look at Galo and a wave of comfort came over him. Lio inched closer and could feel the heat radiating off his chest. It was comforting, but even as sleep began to take him, he still felt like something was off.

~~~  
“Hey Lio?”  
Lio’s eyes shot open and met Galo’s. The room was dark but there was just enough light for Lio to see the look of concern on Galo’s face.  
“What is it?”  
“You were...shivering, kinda violently actually. Are you okay?”  
As if Galo saying it had suddenly reminded his body, Lio felt it. The feeling of cold is just the absence of heat. Heat had always been there and he had grown used to that so of course he’d be cold now.  
This felt different somehow but he couldn’t put it into words so he just said, “I’m cold.”  
Galo scooted even closer to him and put an arm around him under the covers.  
“Is this any better?” He said gently.  
It was as in it made him feel more secure but it didn’t help the strange temperature sensations happening in his body.  
“Maybe? I’m still cold.”  
“I’ll go turn the heat up a little.” Galo said and started to move away, but Lio quickly pulled him back down.  
“No, no it’s okay. It probably won’t help.” Lio said sadly. He let go of Galo and started to curl up. He never let himself look small like this. He may be short but Lio always tried to make himself look imposing. Lio Fotia was the leader of the Mad Burnish, the hope and pride of all the burnish. He had to stand tall for them. The flames didn’t hurt that either. His armor made him intimidating and there was always fire around him. But now…  
“They’re gone” he said out loud.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” Galo asked. He leaned back down on the bed facing the still curled up Lio.  
“I don’t want to just unload on you.”  
“It’s okay! I can be a good listener.”  
“Really?”  
“Yes. Tell me what’s bothering you. I know it’s more than just ‘I’m cold.’ 

Lio pulled the blankets in closer like a barrier shielding himself from Galo. He knew he didn’t need to, Galo would never intentionally harm him, but he had never opened up to anyone like this. Meis and Gueira would make him talk sometimes. They could tell when he was off too. Only then he was more inclined to listen. If Lio was off, all of the Mad Burnish were off. He couldn’t afford to jeopardize a mission. 

Although he was reluctant to open up to Galo, there was something about the way he looked. Galo was smart. Well not all the time and not whenever he was emotional. But he understood people. Despite everyone including Galo himself calling him an idiot, he was perhaps one of the best people to vent to. 

“I think my body’s just not used to it yet. I’m sure I’ll be okay soon but for now I’m cold all the time. But for some reason there've been moments where I’m too hot.” 

Galo placed a hand on Lio’s forehead feeling for a fever.  
“Hmm doesn’t feel like you have a fever, but you should probably take it easy. I’ll take your temperature just in case.” He pushed the covers off and stood up.  
“Your body temperature should be back to 98.6 degrees fahrenheit.” He walked to the door and opened it halfway before pausing.  
“I know there’s still more to it. You gotta open up Lio.”  
Galo walked off and Lio took the moment to ponder opening up. He wanted to. He really wanted to. He could trust Galo, right? He-

Lio doubled over his thought process interrupted. He grasped at his chest. It was burning. Something was very wrong.  
“G-“ He gasped trying to call Galo’s name but the air wouldn’t move through his lungs. It was like all the oxygen in his body was being pulled away. 

“Are you okay- LIO”  
Galo stuck his head in the door and immediately ran to his side upon seeing Lio curled up.  
“g-get back” Lio tried to speak but couldn’t tell if the words got  
“What? Lio! Hey! What’s wrong”  
“get back, Get Back, GET BACK” 

Lio unfurled and shoved Galo away from him a second before his head shot back, and flames burst from his mouth and eyes accompanied by a primal scream. Galo jumped back at the sight and ran out to get the fire extinguisher.  
Lio had felt this sensation once before. Burnish awakenings were violent. Whenever the promare found a new host to resonate with they got too excited and their power burst with all the emotions the host had to offer. People who just turned burnish didn’t know how to handle that explosion of energy, but Lio did. He had trained himself into the image of the boss of the Mad Burnish. It took discipline.  
Lio only let the flames rampage for a few seconds while he was caught off guard and drowned in the euphoria of the flames. He quickly reeled them in leaving only a few embers crawling on his skin. Lio was breathing hard from the effort of holding the flames back. He lifted his head up only to be met with-  
PSSSSSSSSSHHHHHH  
A cloud of carbon dioxide coated him smothering the last of the promare on his body.  
“Ga-“  
PSSSHH  
Galo let out one last little cloud from the extinguisher and Lio just sat there for a second his breath literally taken away.  
Lio brought a hand up to wipe the foam away from his face revealing a very unamused expression.  
“Lio are you okay? Was that the Promare?” Galo asked setting the extinguisher down.  
“Uh, yeah.” Lio said quietly. He was still a bit stunned from both his reawakening and the sudden blast of foam.  
Galo sat down next to him and helped brush off the carbon dioxide while Lio started at his hand.  
“Ga-” He started again but his words dropped off into a coughing fit.  
“Hey! Lio!”  
“I’m… fine,” He choked out “The flames… I think...they took all the oxygen out of my lungs… in order to ignite.” Lio stated punctuating his sentence with another cough. He sat up fully and declared “I’m alright now.”  
“Are you sure?”  
“Yeah actually. I feel really good.” Lio wrapped his arms around himself and smiled. “It’s warm again.”

Galo saw a tear stream down Lio’s cheek but it evaporated before it reached his chin.  
Hehehe Lio heard them, the sounds of the promare in his head. They weren’t loud and demanding arson as they had been before. They were just white noise that sounded very happy. Lio outstretched his arm and unfurled his hand to let flame emerge from his palm. It was so natural to him. But now Lio knew. The flame was alive. It was sentient. And it had opened a new rift in time and space. 

“Woah” Galo’s eyes went as wide as they had been back in the cave when he saw the promare up close. “Look it even has a little face.” The flame did have some semblance of two eyes and a mouth but they kept morphing with the shape of the flame. 

“Why did you come back?” Lio asked it. But neither the flame in his hand nor the flames raging in his head answered with any words. The flame in his hand moved of its own volition, coiling itself up Lio’s arm and around his head before pausing in front of his face then flickering out. 

“Did you catch any of that Lio?”  
“No,” Lio sighed, “But I can tell something. It’s like they’re not all here. Not in full force raging in the Earth’s core. They’re quieter. I could probably still make my armor and bike, but I doubt I could pull that dragon stunt again.”

“But how did they get back here? We closed the rift with Galo de Lion when the flames were all like WOOSH over the whole planet right? Otherwise what was all that fire for?” Galo reenacted the scene with his arms.

“We never knew what caused the rift to open in the first place. I had assumed humans were involved somehow, but maybe the promare did it themselves. Maybe there was something here they wanted?”

“Wait.” Galo said “They’re a collective right? So they move together.”

“Yeah. Well, maybe not all of them came back through. Perhaps it was just a fraction of the promare star that wanted to stay.” 

“Okay but… where are the rest?”  
Galo and Lio stared at each other for a moment before jumping off the bed and rushing to get dressed.

“Shit shit shit!” Lio cursed throwing on a newly acquired Burning Rescue uniform. “It’ll be the Great World Blaze all over again!” If he had had such a violent awakening despite all the discipline he had in holding them back, he could only imagine what someone less experienced would be going through in the next few hours when the city woke up.

Fully dressed (Galo even put a shirt on) the two raced down to their building’s garage where Galo stored his bike.

“Get on Lio!” 

“No need.” Lio smiled and before him bright pink and cyan flames twirled together and hardened into Detroit. Lio mounted his bike and nodded to Galo. The two sped off towards the fire station.


End file.
